Daily Newspaper and Travel Guide for Reeves County, Trans-Pecos, Big Bend of West Texas

Lifestyle

Tuesday, Feb. 17, 1998

Vipond, Hill announce wedding plans

Mrs. Elizabeth Linda Vipond of Cornwall, Onatario, Canada,
announces the engagement and approaching marriage of her
daughter, Laurie Elizabeth Vipond to Craig Alan Hill, son of
Mr. and Mrs. Norman Hill of Pecos.

The bride elect is the daughter of Elizabeth Vipond and the
late Bill Vipond. Miss Vipond is a 1989 high school graduate
and a 1993 graduate of Yarmouth Regional Hospital School of
Nursing and is currently a Registered Nurse employed with
American Home Health and Hospice in Pecos.

Hill is a 1979 graduate of Pecos High School and is employed
with Security State Bank of Pecos.

The wedding is planned for March 21 at Calvary Baptist
Church of Pecos.

Bafidis tell of their new son

Alfonso and Melissa Bafidis announce the birth of their son,
Alfonso Bafidis, IV.

Little Alfonso was born Jan. 29, at Methodist Hospital in
San Antonio, weighed seven pounds, seven ounces and was 19
inches long at birth.

He was welcomed home by his brother Cory Andrew.

Maternal grandmother is Lala Mador of Lubbock.

Paternal grandmother is Linda Bafidis of Pecos.

New finding helps AIDS patients

A new finding could have implications for measuring the
effectiveness of treatment for HIV patients.

Scientists at Houston's Baylor College of Medicine and
Veterans Affairs Medical Center discovered that white blood
cells infected with the virus that causes AIDS are more
likely to migrate across a blood-vessel membrane than are
non-infected cells.

"Cells infected with some forms of HIV-1 might be more
likely to migrate into tissues throughout the body," said
Dr. Holly H. Birdsall, an AIDS researcher at Baylor and VAMC.

Measuring the amount of virus in the patient's plasma is the
latest method for monitoring the efficacy of treatment in
people with HIV.

"But this test measures only free virus in the blood and
does not take into consideration any virus that might be
lying dormant within white blood cells," Birsdall said. She
cautions against underestimating the quantity of virus in a
patient, which would give an inadequate assessment of a
treatment's effectiveness.